Monthly Archives: May 2008

“Plant Identification Terminology-An Illustrated Glossary”by James G. Harris and Melinda Woolf Harris takes the guesswork and mystery out of those unpronounceable plant descriptions often found in references like Hortus and the RHS Dictionary of Plants. Identifying plants and “keying out” where they belong on the genus/species scale can be confusing to say the least. Anyone interested in botany or plant taxonomy can’t do without this gem of a reference book. This isn’t the only plant taxonomy book out there but it’s one of the few with illustrations that make sense. There are over 1900 illustrations of terms used in plant identification keys and descriptions and more than twenty-seven hundred taxonomic terms. Consider it a user-friendly encyclopedia of descriptive plant terms.